Melanie Lynskey loves her husband, Jason Ritter — but she doesn’t love that her Yellowjackets costars are just as infatuated.
“It was great. But I came back to work and everybody was like, ‘Your husband’s the nicest person in the world. He’s our favorite,’” Lynskey, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly of Ritter’s upcoming cameo on the Showtime series. “And I think previously I felt like I was some people’s favorite.”
She teased that “it was a little bit of a heartbreak,” adding, “Everyone was like, ‘We still love you.’ And I was like, ‘I know he’s nicer. He’s nicer than me. He’s easier to be around. He never complains.’ So he became the new favorite. It was hard for me to give up the title, but I was also happy.”
The Togetherness alum and Ritter, 43, met while filming The Big Ask in 2013 and went on to work alongside each other in several other projects, including 2014’s We’ll Never Have Paris and 2016’s The Intervention. Ritter would also appear in Lynskey’s Candy and The Last of Us before being set to guest star in season 2 of Showtime’s Yellowjackets.
“We’ve worked together a few times and it’s always been really fun, but I mean, I’ll do anything with him. He’s so talented,” Lynskey told Us. “I love his face. I love looking at his face.”
The Sweet Home Alabama actress joked that his Yellowjackets appearance would be one and done. “No, that’s it. Thank you!” she said. “He can’t be the favorite! I just don’t want the crew to like him more. That was my only issue was that everybody — nobody could stop talking about how kind he was and wonderful and easygoing. And at a certain point, I was like, ‘I got it.’ Yeah, I got it. He’s great. He’s the best.”
Ritter, meanwhile, has been nothing but a proud spouse too. “At the beginning of our relationship, I was seeing her do a lot of independent movies, and I could not wait until I would be able to see what she did in one thing or another,” he told Us in November 2022. “But it’s just so exciting to see her doing the kinds of roles that she got to do in the independent movies. You know, interesting, gritty, cool, unexpected things, and see people respond to it the way they are. It’s just amazing and well-deserved.”
The pair, who welcomed a daughter in 2018, have kept quiet on what year they got married, but they did celebrate their anniversary last month. Ritter told Us that his marriage advice to others would be to “do the best job you can at listening and being willing to grow and change.”
“We all want to be loved for who we are and that’s absolutely important. But I think that can give you a reason to sort of lay back and relax. And I think what’s incredible in a relationship is if you have a wonderful partner, they can help you grow and help you get to 2.0 if you’re willing to do that. It’s very unlikely that everything you are will match up a hundred percent with the other person. So where can you change, where can they change?” the Parenthood alum said at the time. “I think the stubbornness and the unwillingness to grow can be poisonous. And I think if you can do something that can make someone happier, do it.”
Picking up a few chores doesn’t hurt either. “Just look around and see what you can do in the house,” he added with a laugh. “Can you clean something? Can you throw on a load of laundry? Can you do the dishes? What can you fold? Do things need to be folded? That kind of stuff goes a really long way in just maintaining a partnership of where things don’t feel a little bit more spread out.”
As of now, details on Ritter’s Yellowjackets guest spot have remained hush-hush. Lynskey was nominated last year for an Emmy in the Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series category for her role as Shauna in the series, which also stars Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Liv Hewson, Courtney Eaton, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole and newcomers Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell.
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Yellowjackets airs on Showtime Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
